The science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous... Based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.

Count your blessings for selfish reasons! Psychological studies show that people who are aware of their blessings and feel grateful for them live longer than non-grateful people, have fewer medical problems such as hypertension, earn more and achieve longer marriages.

Instant-doomsday hyperbole caused the world's attention to focus on the hypothetical threat of global warming to the exclusion of environmental menaces that are real, palpable, and awful right now.

Though environmental orthodoxy holds that Third World deforestation is caused by rapacious clear-cutters and ruthless cattle barons, penniless peasants seeking fuel wood may be the greatest threat to our forests.

But by showing us live coverage of every bad thing happening everywhere in the world, cable news makes life seem like it's just an endless string of disasters - when, for most people in most places today, life is fairly good.

For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker.

The science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous... Based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.